And that is the principle upon which I have always carried on my propaganda. I have no secrets. What I have to say is said once a week in a full page of the "Appeal," and the opposition to violence and conspiracy in the class struggle which I there write in public I advocate just as vigorously in private, and all my friends know it. So, if at any time you read that a carload of dynamite bombs has been found in my home, or that I have been carrying on a cipher correspondence with some foreign assassins, or that I have poisoned my wife and eloped with a chorus girl, or that I have taken a job on the "Los Angeles Times"—please go back and read this warning, and understand what is being done to both of us.
CONCLUSION
When I first talked over this book with my wife, she gave me a bit of advice: "Give your facts first, and then call your names." So throughout this book I have not laid much stress on the book's title. Perhaps you are wondering just where the title comes in!
What is the Brass Check? The Brass Check is found in your pay-envelope every week—you who write and print and distribute our newspapers and magazines. The Brass Check is the price of your shame—you who take the fair body of truth and sell it in the market-place, who betray the virgin hopes of mankind into the loathsome brothel of Big Business. And down in the counting-room below sits the "madame" who profits by your shame; unless, perchance, she is off at Palm Beach or Newport, flaunting her jewels and her feathers.
Please do not think that I am just slinging ugly words. Off and on for years I have thought about this book, and figured over the title, and what it means; I assert that the Brass Check which serves in the house of ill-fame as "the price of a woman's shame" is, both in its moral implications and in its social effect, precisely and identically the same as the gold and silver coins and pieces of written paper that are found every week in the pay-envelopes of those who write and print and distribute capitalist publications.
The prostitution of the body is a fearful thing. The young girl, trembling with a strange emotion of which she does not know the meaning, innocent, confiding and tender, is torn from
